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Friday, April 23, 2010

PCAKK TREASURE HUNT - A SCRAMBLE TO THE FINISH LINE

The recent conclusion of yet another hunt in KK reminded me of the PCAKK hunt (from 2009) whose tale I had not told.

KOTA KINABALU, 26 Jul 2009: There must be something in the air surrounding this city below the wind that intrigues us - we have been returning again and again for major hunts held here for the past three years, though each time we have had to assemble a scratch team. For the PCAKK hunt we had invited Claire onboard but eventually ran 3 as she ended up being ko-ed by an illness.

Looking at the format of the hunt, you could tell that it was meticulously designed by the clerk of course, Alvin Wong & his Kena Tembak (aka Main Tembak) crew. Within 7 hours, teams were required to complete 3 Legs (40 questions & 4 treasures) and 3 Challenge events. Many of the Legs had 3 hunting sectors and each leg had a window for submission. The unique thing about this hunt was that tulips were discarded in favour of a map sketch for each of the hunting sectors. To hop from one hunting sector to the next, teams had to first identify a "landmark" provided on the sketch then find their own way there aided by a GPS device or paper maps.

Although I liked the idea behind the maps, I felt that the "landmarks" provided on 2 of the 6 maps was vague even for the local hunters, making it a real challenge to locate these hunting sectors. We had difficulties locating Sector B - Pos Malaysia was our only lead since we did not recognize the structure provided. After a 2 hour struggle (driving from one Pos Malaysia to the next plus following false leads from several locals), we finally got our breakthrough while waiting at the traffic lights when a chinese guy parked alongside our car pointed us to Tanjung Aru. But the damage had been done. We scrambled to answer the questions here in order to make the submission window for Leg 1 plus we had to skip an entire sector in Leg 2 in order to avoid disqualification.

One of the better maps, which had familiar names like GSC and Hotel Rafflesia.

One of the vague maps which had an unfamiliar structure located at a round-a-bout.

This format also provided an added challenge to the hunters, especially the novices. The sectors were not further sectioned to identify the area-to-search for each question. This means that the answers can be found (in sequence) anywhere between the start and end following the direction of the arrows, which is no different from what we are used to (with the regular tulips) except that here we have to circle around several blocks of shops covering a distance of 500m - 1km; with the added encumbrance that these sectors had to be covered on foot since majority of the hunting sectors selected were not conducive for motor hunts.

For Challenge 1, teams were given a choice between answering 8 Bold questions along the 3 Legs or recognizing famous KK landmarks. We picked the former, but ended up having very little opportunity to work on these questions due to our navigation nightmare. Challenge 2 was a Shopping Challenge while Challenge 3 was a test to name the islands of Sabah.

Now looking back at the questions, I must say that I am quite impressed. Just a pity, that we didn't have the luxury to enjoy them on hunt day.